Line-item veto

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The line-item veto, or partial veto, is a special form of veto that authorizes a chief executive to reject particular provisions of a bill enacted by a legislature without vetoing the entire bill. Many countries have different standards for invoking the line-item veto, if it exists at all. Each country and/or state has its own particular requirement for overriding a line-item veto.

The President of Brazil has the power of the line-item veto over all legislation. Any provisions vetoed in such a manner are returned to the Brazilian congress, and can be overridden by a vote. Recently, the President of Brazil, vetoed portions of a new forestry law which had been criticized as potentially causing another wave of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest.[1]

Starting with Ulysses S. Grant, every US president has asked Congress to enact legislation granting the president line-item veto power but it was not until the Clinton presidency that Congress passed such legislation.[3] Although it was intended to control "pork barrel spending", the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 was held to be unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in a 1998 ruling in Clinton v. City of New York. The court affirmed a lower court decision that the line-item veto was equivalent to the unilateral amendment or repeal of only parts of statutes and therefore violated the Presentment Clause of the United States Constitution.[4] Before the ruling, President Clinton applied the line-item veto to the federal budget 82 times.[5][6]

Since then, the prospect of granting the President a line-item veto has occasionally resurfaced in Congress, either through a constitutional amendment[citation needed] or a differently-worded bill. Most recently, the House of Representatives passed a bill on February 8, 2012, that would have granted the President a limited line-item veto; however, the bill was not heard in the Senate.[7]

The most-commonly proposed form of the line-item veto is limited to partial vetoes of spending bills.[3]